Last week, Saudi Arabia called an urgent meeting of the military chiefs of Turkey and Pakistan under the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, as Houthi attacks on the kingdom intensified. When the chiefs met in Riyadh on September 25, they discussed intelligence sharing, military coordination and the integration of defense capabilities. The meeting has renewed the question of whether Turkey could be drawn into the war in Yemen.

Over the weekend of September 11–13, Yemen's Houthis captured the Red Sea port of Mocha and the island of Perim, completing their takeover of Yemen's Red Sea coast and increasing their control over the Bab al-Mandeb strait. Saudi Arabia was forced to shut down a critical oil pipeline that had become one of the kingdom's principal outlets to the sea after Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

On September 3, Turkey's central bank took back 16 tons of gold that it had pledged as security for a loan of roughly $1.8 billion in dollars. It was the last in a series of such deals that began with the Iran war, and the return lifted Turkey's gold reserves to 791.4 tons.

The leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on August 7, declaring that an armed attack on any one of the three countries would be treated as an attack on all. The agreement is open to other countries, with Egypt and Qatar among the states that could potentially join.

On August 7, 2026, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan signed a trilateral defense pact in Mecca, each committing to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. Coming amid the Iran-US war and a renewed Houthi threat to Saudi Arabia, the agreement has drawn immediate comparison to NATO's Article 5. Our experts weigh in.

Turkey stands closer to ending its four-decade war with the PKK. A draft framework law, the product of more than two years of negotiations with the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, reached parliament this week, and a plenary vote is expected soon. An end to the armed conflict would benefit Turkey and the wider region. The way the government has drafted the law and managed the process, however, carries several warning signs that temper such optimism.

This report is addressed to two audiences simultaneously: Turkish policymakers weighing how to develop the Beylikova deposit, and Western governments and companies assessing whether Turkey is a credible partner in their supply chain diversification strategies. It examines both the opportunities Turkey’s entry into the rare earth sector could realistically generate and the structural obstacles that stand between the current situation and those outcomes.

This report analyzes Turkey’s vision for Syria following the fall of the Assad family and the rise of the HTS under the leadership of Ahmad al-Sharaa. In this regard, it focuses on the foreign actors that, alongside Turkey, now have the greatest ability to shape Syria’s future: namely the United States and Israel.

This study evaluates, through long-term projections to 2053, the potential impact of increased EV penetration on Turkey’s energy landscape. It provides a comparative assessment of how changes in the share of EVs within the total vehicle fleet, across several scenario frameworks, could influence fuel demand and petroleum import volumes. A second, closely related objective is to measure the scale of Turkey’s oil dependency in order to establish a basis for examining its policy implications.

This study focuses on the geopolitical dimensions and constraints shaping Turkey’s ambition to become a natural gas hub. The emphasis is on Turkey’s diplomatic relations with key supplier countries, the political instability across the wider Middle East, and the limited capacity of neighboring states to produce and export gas reliably—factors that collectively can make or undermine Turkey’s hub ambitions.

The Turkey–EU Customs Union, established in 1995, has been a defining feature of trade relations between Turkey and the European Union. Over the past three decades, the global economic landscape has evolved significantly, necessitating a modernization of the agreement to address new trade realities, regulatory developments, and emerging geopolitical challenges.

'A gift from God' was one of Erdoğan's first descriptions related to coup attempt in July 15. At first no one realized that God's gift meant a chaotic environment in which he needed to declare a national emergency with no checks and balances and then transform Türkiye’s parliamentary democracy into an executive presidency.